Not Our Daughter

Thirty-Eight

They arrived in Austin around nine that night. The drive had been a full eight hours, even with minimal stops for gas and quick bathroom breaks. Texas was a massive state, and most of the journey was across wide-open West Texas plains. But Cole didn’t mind it. It felt safer being out on country highways without much traffic around them. Cole and Lisa took it in shifts. He was exhausted and tried to sleep a little in the passenger seat while Lisa was behind the wheel. But it was difficult. Every time he closed his eyes, he relived his encounter with the stocky guy and the FBI agent. He kept wondering what had happened to the killer. The fall from the warehouse was around eight feet, and the guy had landed square on his side. The last thing Cole saw before shutting the garage door was the guy trying to roll over while grunting in pain. He could only hope he’d broken his collarbone or worse.

Much of the drive involved storytelling, as Jade now wanted to know every detail of their lives from the point when they left Austin thirteen years ago until the current day. With each passing hour, his daughter seemed to be slightly less abrasive and a little more accepting of her new reality. She got emotional when she found out she had real cousins, aunts and uncles, and even grandparents. Cole and Lisa had previously told her neither of them had siblings, her grandparents had all passed, and there were only distant relatives with whom they did not keep up. But they still couldn’t promise her she’d ever meet them. Everything depended on what happened next when they arrived in Austin. They stopped at a Whataburger on the city’s outskirts, and Cole quickly went inside and grabbed them some cheeseburgers. They ate in the car. They were almost completely out of money. They’d purchased some cheap dry clothes along the way at a Walmart. And they’d had to fill up with gas several times. Cole had no idea where they would sleep tonight. Could he even find a motel room somewhere for thirty-five bucks?

He decided not to focus on that right now and instead go over their game plan. Jade was already proving to be incredibly useful. She was more tech savvy than he was and had found a match for Hailey McGee, her biological mother’s sister, on Instagram. Cole and Lisa were sure it was the same woman—she looked so much like her sister. From their online stalking, they figured out that Hailey was a single mother of an eight-year-old girl. And she regularly posted photos of herself working a waitress job at a place called the Hula Hut, which sat on the banks of the Colorado River near the edge of downtown—including one from an hour ago in which she posed with other waitresses. The tag read: Another night in restaurant paradise! LOL . The young women all wore khaki shorts and brightly colored tank tops.

“She’s probably still there,” Cole said. “If we hurry.”

Lisa blew out forcefully. “But what are we going to do, Cole? Walk straight up to her in the restaurant and reintroduce ourselves? I’m sure news of the FBI finding us in Colorado has hit home here in Austin. Hailey has probably seen it and is reliving the nightmare all over again. She’s not going to talk to us. She’ll probably freak out and immediately call the police. I would in the same situation.”

“Yeah, I know. I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe if we can get her alone—”

Jade interjected. “Or maybe I should be the one to talk to her first.”

Cole’s forehead bunched. “What? No way.”

“Think about it, Dad,” Jade continued. “If I go up to her and tell her who I am, I think she’d be shocked but also open to talking to me. I mean, I’m her sister’s daughter. She’s not going to call the police on her niece who’s been missing all these years.”

“I don’t know,” Lisa said. “Why would she even believe you’re her niece?”

“I have a photo,” Cole said, his memory jogged. “It’s stored in a cloud album. I remember it clearly. I took it during one of the first visitations right after we started fostering you. Hailey was there with your mother, and she’s holding you in her arms.”

“I remember it, too,” Lisa said.

“I could take your phone with me and show her the photo,” Jade suggested. “Then I could try to convince her nothing was what it seemed with my mother’s death. That the police got it all wrong. And beg her to come talk to you guys.”

Cole hated the idea of sending his daughter alone into the fray. All he’d done for the past thirteen years was shield her from it. But he might have no choice.

“What if she doesn’t believe her?” Lisa said, looking at him. “It could go badly.”

Jade answered first. “Then I just get out of there and leave.”

“I still don’t like it,” Lisa said, continuing to wrestle with the idea. “Anything could happen to you. And we wouldn’t be there to prevent it.”

“Mom, let me do this,” Jade insisted. “Let me help my family.”

Cole saw something in her eyes he’d never seen before. It was like she’d just grown up right in front of him. She was no longer his little girl. Jade didn’t want to be protected by them anymore. She wanted to face her life on her own.

“She can do this, Lisa. Like you said, she’s stronger than we think.”

Lisa exhaled, finally nodded. “Okay. But be careful.”